German, a West Germanic language belonging to the Indo-European family, is one of the languages of culture and education in Romania. It is spoken by one of 18 recognised minorities in Romania. German has been spoken in Romania throughout history and continues to be spoken today because various German-speaking groups settled in what is now Romania long before the founding of the modern Romanian state. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, a large part of the German-speaking population emigrated, mainly to the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria. The German-Romanian Friendship Treaty ("Treaty on Partnership and Cooperation in Europe"), signed shortly after the fall of communism (21 April 1992), was an important support for preserving the identity and cultural heritage of the German-speaking minorities in Romania (DFDR & Deutsche Botschaft Bukarest, 2014, p. 43). Although most of Romania's German-speaking citizens left the country after the fall of communism in 1989, the existing school system in the cities was maintained due to the Romanian population's great interest in German-language education. Every Regional Dossier begins with an introduction about the region in question, followed by six chapters that each deal with a specific level of the education system (e.g. primary education). Chapters 8 and 9 cover the main lines of educational research on the minority language under discussion, and the prospects for the minority language in general and in education in particular, respectively. Chapter 10 provides a summary of statistics. Lists of (legal) references and useful addresses regarding the minority language are given at the end of the Regional Dossier.